What women want: gender-based marketing is a risky business, but it's a risk companies can't afford not to take.

Nineteen fifty-five. The United States and Panama sign the canal treaty, James Dean dies in a car crash, and Scrabble makes a dramatic entrance into the board game market. With 20 million American women now licensed to drive, Chrysler rolls out the Dodge La Femme and hails it as the first and only car designed for "your majesty, the modern American woman." A hardtop custom coupe version of the Royal Lancer, the Dodge La Femme features "Heather Rose" exterior, upholstery and trim, and an eyebrow-raising set of accessories that includes a raincoat, umbrella, purse, lipstick and compact. But it's not, apparently, what the 1950s modern American woman had in mind; the Dodge La Femme bombs and is pulled off the market the following year.

Today, almost half a century later, the Dodge La Femme lives on as a vintage car--a collector's item that offers both sentimental value and the intriguing appeal of a somewhat tainted past. To marketers, however, the Dodge La Femme is highly valuable for a very different reason: it's a shining example of what companies shouldn't do when trying to create and market products that they hope will appeal to women.

"Marketing to women should be transparent, not pink," says Martha Barletta, president of The TrendSight Group in Chicago and author of Marketing to Women: How to Understand, Reach and Increase Your Share of the World's Largest Market Segment. "Companies who want to reach women need to really show that they're sensitive to the needs of this market and that they're taking it seriously. Because if they think that it's all about decor and all they need to do is paint their brand pink, that will backfire on them 99 out of a hundred times."

Know your customer

Even with the lessons learned from the Dodge La Femme fiasco, and the supposed evolution of marketing principles and techniques over the last five decades, gender-based marketing--a term that almost always applies to marketing that is directed to women--remains a risky undertaking for most companies. Get it wrong and you're certain to offend. Miss the mark and your targeted audience will ignore you. Either way, you're looking at a very costly mistake.

But as marketing experts like Barletta will tell you, gender-based marketing is a risk that companies simply can't afford not to take. Consider these numbers: women account for more than half the population in North America--15.4 million women versus 15.1 million men in Canada. They make up almost half the workforce in Canada and are responsible for more than half of business trips taken each year. Women are also leading the entrepreneurial charge in the country; according to Industry Canada, four out of five businesses are started by women. Most significantly, research has shown that women control 80% of consumer dollars spent in North America.